Door to the Villa (where our classes were held):
I’ve essentially been writing papers for 8 days straight, an exhausting task, but I turn the last ones in today! Anyways, yesterday I went out by myself to hang out with a friend and as I thought about the events, it was nothing particularly exciting or strange, but I thought that explaining all that happened would be a great way for you to understand a bit more of what its like here.
I was going to Zamalek (an area of town right across the Nile from us) to have coffee with my friend Jana, a Belgian masters student at the Dutch Institute in Cairo who I met at the beginning of the semester when our two programs spent a day together discussing politics. So I left my flat and walked to where I normally get a taxi, but it was almost standstill traffic, so I had to walk a bit to a different intersection. A taxi with a woman passenger and her young son pulled up next to me, and when I said where I was going, he let me get in too. I got to where I needed to be let out and started walking to the Institute. On the way, a man who looked for the most part quite normal was walking towards me and when we passed, he stopped and said to me in plain English, “…mother…that’s why they put me in prison…” I didn’t catch it all, I was walking fast to get past him, but I have no idea what that was about. I didn’t know exactly where the street was that I was looking for, so asked a woman in Arabic for directions. She responded in English and proceeded to take me with her right to where I needed to go.
I went inside and saw one of my Egyptian friends who works at the library there. He and I caught up for a few minutes; he told me a bit more about his Easter service (that I had attended a couple hours of) as well as their day after Eater in which they all eat boiled eggs, a tradition that goes back to Pharonic times (!?). Then my friend showed up along with one of her friends (who is half-Tunisian) and we went to an American coffee shop. We spent the time talking about my recent travels, some of their trips around Egypt and what it will be like for them moving back to Belgium in May. They are both here to study Arabic full time and are quite fluent (!). One of their classes studies Friday sermons from mosques and tomorrow they are going to one to observe (I can’t even imagine being fluent enough to understand those).
We said our goodbyes and I decided to just walk back home, the first time I’ve done that alone from that particular area. As I walked along, it felt great that I knew where I was going and felt so comfortable walking by myself on the busy Cairo streets. As I crossed the Nile, there was no one around me and it was so loud from all the traffic, that I sang worship songs in Swahili. Then of course, since it is Cairo afterall, I noticed a car that was stopped along the road, drove slowly past me and then stopped again as well as a motorcycle stopped along the road, which then drove by me as well with the driver turning back to wink at me. Fortunately, they didn’t follow me any further. I walked past guards with their semi-automatic weapons and crisp uniforms. I played frogger to cross the 8 lanes of particularly heavy fast-moving traffic, putting my hand out to let cars know I was going across and would they please not hit me. I then got to our neighborhood Agouza, where I saw the familiar faces of Sabah, my vegetable lady, Mr. Koko’s son who works at a sandwich place, and our baoeb (caretaker of our apartment building) chatting with friends outside the sweet-smelling sheesha (hookah) bar. I dodged the piles of trash on the road, walked around the ladies who sit on the corner of the sidewalk making tea, and climbed the five flights of dark, narrow steps of 11 El Fardous to my flat, where I was welcomed back by my 8 lovely flat-mates.
El Fardous Street:
Though that last week and a half in Cairo was intensely busy as we wrote papers, it was also wonderful spending quality time with our Egyptian friends and fellow MESPers. We managed to fit in some very special last times including: the guys made a fabulous dinner for the girls and invited us over to their very clean flat with flowers and beautifully lade out dishes, my flat hosted the other girls’ flat for a pancake and egg brunch, our flat cooked dinner together on multiple occasions, we built a fort out of our living room furniture which was later converted to a movie theater, we celebrated Orthodox Easter with our Coptic friends, we had fajitas at the director’s flat for Orthodox Easter dinner, we hosted our Egyptian girlfriends for a final party, we went out to eat a final time with a group of Egyptian friends, and finished off the semester with a ma’a salaama (goodbey) party our last night complete with a talent show of hilarious skits and songs. (Can you tell we did a lot of eating during this time?)
Girls enjoying dinner cooked by the guys:
Hanging out on the roof:
Food for the ladies' brunch:
Now, MESP is over. Goodbyes have been said to some very dear friends and the most incredible community I have been blessed to live in. I don’t know that I can necessarily sum up the semester in a few words, but here’s my attempt. I discovered my love for the people and culture of the Middle East; I learned what living in intentional community can look like; my eyes were opened to the complex political situations of the region and the wide-range of opinions that exist; my heart was broken for the lack of hope that exists for so many with the state of their governements; I was exposed to Eastern Christianity and was able to see and appreciate a broader view of what the body of Christ looks like; I struggled to understand the relationships and dynamics in the region between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism; I saw different faces of Islam than what is typically portrayed in Western media and was oftentimes humbled and challenged by their faith; I grappled with issues of faith boundaries and understanding my faith more as I was challenged to not just give “cheap grace” answers; I developed relationships with MESPers that challenged me in my faith, political opinions, how I relate to others, how I view God, and more – for their influence in my life, I am extremely grateful and hope to remain a part of their lives though not in the same capacity of course as this semester.
Now I am in Kenya for a month and missing the things that made MESP such a great and formative semester for me. My prayer though, is that I may continue to learn and explore these issues I was faced with, be able to explain to some small extent to others about what I have learned, and most importantly, incorporate what I learned about God in the Middle East in my daily worship, for God is indeed very present and active there.
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